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Android to control half of smartphone market, say analysts
A bevy of Android devices will ultimately mean that Google’s mobile operating system will control largely half of the smartphone market, according to a Piper Jaffray report. Apple’s iOS will probably top out with market share of 20 percent to 30 percent in the long run.
Here comes the decade of the developer
IT professionals were the heroes of recent decades when they helped enable big productivity gains. The next decade will have a new set of heroes: Developers. Learn why.
The importance of open source gaming
I’ve learned one important thing from my 19 year old.
Gaming is important to his generation.
It wasn’t to me. Yes, I knew Steve Jackson (right) at Rice, but he seemed an unusual person. To my son Jackson is a God — it’s like I went to school with Randolph Scott.
Many in my son’s generation feel the same way. Gaming is a big deal to them. It’s like TV was to my generation, like the Internet is to both of us.
But gaming is not like the Internet in one important respect. It is highly proprietary. It is far more proprietary than the worlds of PC and enterprise software, where I make my living.
Most people my son’s age have more respect for game companies’ “stuff” than their parents’ “stuff.” (He’s not constantly bumming $20 off Electronic Arts, I can tell you that.)
Which brings me to projects like PSGroove, a “jailbreak of the PS/3 game machine that lets you make copies of your games and gain ownership of them. It means you don’t lose your games when you lose or break the disk (as people my son’s age are wont to do).
How important are open source projects like this, and to what extent do kids follow them?
The answer, in my house, is disappointing. My son is terribly inconvenienced by Digital Rights Management, and sometimes even complains about it at dinner. But he accepts the concept and has never tried to get around it. He says he’s not a programmer. (Most people my age don’t produce TV shows, either.)
Is he typical?
A poll here at ZDNet might get misleading results, because the fact you’re reading this site means you’re interested in technology, and the fact you’re reading this blog means you’re interested in open source. The sample is skewed.
But some of you doubtless know some people under 25. My son won’t believe this, but I suspect some of you may even be under 25.
So how important is open source to your gaming experience? Have you tried to jailbreak a machine, perhaps because you lost one too many disks or wanted to share something the DRM said not to share? Do you follow the efforts of open source gaming, even a little bit?
Or is the proprietary nature of gaming just something you accept?
Google pits the law against its open source designs
Could Google’s PR machine be hiding a weak legal case?
Google made its case recently to The New York Times, arguing that Oracle is trying to “take back” Java, and the Times got a law professor to call the case part of an “open source proxy war” in which open source is used as a weapon.
Bad Oracle. Nasty, nasty Oracle. (Then they play right into it by hiring Mark Hurd.)
Product is also a weapon in this war, I would argue. Google was dumping its Wave project. So how big a deal is it that it puts Wave in a box? Isn’t that more of a paper-or-plastic question? It’s like the rich kid who gives poor kids his old toys for Christmas.
For Google, I suspect, image is everything. This chart makes clear that Android phones are catching up with Apple’s, in terms of mobile data use. But are these really Android phones? Or are they carrier phones built on top of Android?
It is telling that, on the legal case, we still haven’t heard from groups like the Free Software Foundation. Some response is said to be forthcoming. But if this is as easy a call as Google makes out, why hasn’t it been made yet?
I’m as big a fan of Google as anyone. I like their stuff and I like their style. But there’s an old legal saying that when you don’t have the law on your side you argue the facts, and when you don’t have the facts you argue the law, but when you don’t have either you pound the table.
Google is doing a lot of table pounding.
Can Oracle, Hurd topple HP, IBM without services?
Oracle’s hiring of former HP CEO Mark Hurd gives it some expertise in integrated hardware and software, but it’s unclear whether the company can topple HP and IBM without a services unit.
WashPost's tweet blunder highlights power of Twitter, microblogging
If you still think of Twitter as a useless joke, think again. A Washington Post sports writer is on suspension after a Twitter experiment backfired.